Out With The Old, In With The Old

It was as if the basketball gods had decided to have mercy on me. Either that or my incessant whining was too grating for them to tolerate, while they were busy continually torturing the Knicks for treating Bernard King like garbage back in the 80s.

Thankfully, just as I was about to have that quiet conversation I’d been dreading — “Did I say Heat? I meant, cast of ‘Teen Mom’” — things began popping off in Miami. And I’m not referring to that angry Esquire writer (more on him later) popping off on Twitter. (Okay, here.) But also popping, like, ligaments and other body parts.

To being with, the injuries are mounting. You already know about Mike Miller going down for three, maybe four months. Now, very useful and cleverly named Udonis Haslem is out indefinitely, which is for sure a Code Red disaster for the team. Haslem is no All-Star, but at least he is, in NBA parlance, “serviceable.” And, while Dwyane Wade isn’t exactly out, per se, he always seems to be on his way to or from the trainer’s room.

Losing Wade, for however long, immediately transforms the Heat into a significantly crappier version of the James-era Cavaliers, which is an irony not lost on anyone who correctly uses the word.

At any point, had Pat Riley dropped the lotion and listened to the thousands of people who said, “Hey, when you guys play a team with a great point guard, isn’t going to be difficult and exhausting for your best player to have to chase them for 40 minutes a night?” the Heat would have a point guard, Wade would guard the two and LeBron the three. And, had he spent a little more time scouting for young, developmental players the bench wouldn’t be filled with folks who could be on an episode of “NBA: Dead or Alive?” Players like Juwan Howard, Jerry Stackhouse, Jamaal Magloire and, you know, “veterans” like Eddie House.

But Heat fans should relax because help is on the way. When the Heat’s team nuclear physicist finishes carbon dating Erick Dampier’s earwax to determine how old he actually is, he will become another cog in the wheel. A very slow, injury-prone wheel.

Meanwhile, a little further down the bench, boyish coach Eric Spoelstra is attempting to avoid being mounted by his boss. To anyone who listens — and let’s be honest, Spoelstra would have trouble attracting attention at a Burger King drive-thru — he is sounding like Greg Marmalard, urging calm over the din, claiming that he wants players with huge egos because that… will… help…them… win? (Yeah, I don’t get that either.)

There are some bright spots, however: LeBron has resigned himself to his lot in life (misery) and has played pretty lights out, despite his well-publicized exhaustion. And Chris Bosh has awakened with a pair of monster games — while the fans are still sending Twitter updates about being at the game, rather than watching it.

And best of all, somebody cared about Bosh enough to create a mildly clever, mocking video that rocketed around the interwebz like a cat attacking a baby.

Sure, he pussed about it, but that was only temporary.

The sad fact is that this video would be far better had it been made by people who could actually rap, or were attractive enough to look at for more than ten seconds. It has some funny lines and basically posits Bosh as a low-rent LeBron in the virulent hatred department.

But hell, I was happy because, as far as Heat coverage goes, the thing’s as culturally important as the Zapruder film. And so was the mother of all hissy fits from a writer: Cleveland native Scott Raab, who has been using Twitter and his esquire.com blog to Rochambeau LeBron on a regular basis. Gas dusters have less bitterness than Raab. I am not saying that like it’s a bad thing. Quite the contrary, Raab is at least truthful and honest in pointing out some of the same things that have gotten me to scratch my head. But he uses way too much profanity for the team to just sit back and do nothing.

After carefully studying the evidence team and opining that Mr. Raab was not to be trusted around its players, the team, no wait, the league, no wait, the team responded by banning him.

That was going to be where I left off, until last night, when I witnessed one of the worst displays of basketball I have ever seen, by players who have two working arms. The Heat played so terribly, that my League Pass involuntarily crashed several times during the third quarter. And here is the proof.

And that goes to show you how, the more things change the more they, in fact, stay the same. Or something to that effect. But listen: don’t get Scott Raab started.

Tony Gervino is a New York City-based editor and writer obsessed with honing his bio to make him sound quirky. He can also be found here.

Image via Keith Allison, from Flickr.